A POOR PLAYER

 

by Paul  Diamond

 

            The girl was dead.  Instead of horror or fear, Peter felt only curiosity.  There was no sign on her of how she had met her death.  She seemed unmarked, lying as if asleep on the sheaves of new-mown hay.  It was warm still and the little wind that ruffled the trees was warm.  She was no more than twenty.  Afterwards he could never have said why he did it, what impelled him to perform so strange an act, but he knelt down beside her and bending over, kissed her mouth.  She was still quite warm and this made him more frightened than if the lips under his lips had been cold as stone.  He jumped up and ran.

 

He was an eight year old boy; the woolly shirt with a round striped collar, short grey trousers held up by a yellow canvas belt with an S hook shaped like a snake, knee length socks which had fallen and lay wrinkled over the ankles of heavy black boots.  His face was freckled and dirty, brown hair short in a pudding basin haircut, knees permanently grazed.  He ran trying to lick and bite the impression of the kiss from his lips.

 

His mother was kneeling, putting a pie into the coal fired oven.

 

"Ma! Ma!  There's a dead body in the far hayfield Ma!  It's a lady and she's got no clothes on."

 

She stood upright and stretched.

 

"Peter Price you naughty boy.  What sort of a story is that?"

 

"No Ma.  Honest Ma.  She looks as if she's asleep but she's

            a dead body."

 

"We'll tell Mr. James and he'll go and look.  But if you're making

            this up your father will give you a good hiding.  You'll see."

 

They went to George James the village Constable.  The body was found and identified as a kitchen maid up at the Manor House.  In due course one of the grooms was arrested, charged, tried and eventually hanged.  It was a very minor murder.  The slaying of poor young women who got themselves pregnant by poor young men was so commonplace as to merit only a brief mention on the inside pages.  There was no glamour or scandal, no high life and very little blood.  Nobody bothered to get up a petition for his reprieve and only Mrs. Van der Elst and a few of her dedicated followers were outside the jail when he dropped screaming through the trapdoor

 

Eight years later the murder had almost been forgotten.  It did not warrant publication in Notable British Trials.  The Sunday papers never recalled it in their regular series on sex ridden crimes.  The groom had been a Barnardo's boy with no family to mourn his passing.  Only Peter Price remembered.  Even his parents had almost forgotten the incident but Peter still felt the impress of those dead lips and he often dreamed of the swelling breasts and the unexpected triangle of hair at the groin. 

 

When he was sixteen his contemporaries had begun to explore the delights of sex but Peter never took part in these games.  You never saw him walking with a girl in Mill Lane and he always went to the movies at the Rialto alone.  He was a well set up young man, tall, muscular and with an unusually clear skin for a lad at that stage of adolescence.  Plenty of girls would have been happy to introduce him to the local courting rituals but none had ever been successful.

 

There was a bit of a fuss when he was invited to a party one Christmas.  The adults had gone to the pub and the youngsters had started a kissing game.  One girl, who was said to be no better than she ought to be, had secretly arranged with the others not to continue with the usual changing of partners which these games involve if she found herself on Peter's lap.  She had already undone her bra at the back in anticipation.  She hugged and kissed him in the darkness for several minutes with no discernible response.  In desperation she tried to force her tongue between his teeth at the same time taking his hand and pushing it under her blouse.  Peter jumped up and rushed from the house throwing the girl to the floor with a bump.

 

As a result of this unnatural behaviour some said that Peter was a Nancy boy but most thought this unlikely.  He was a good cricketer and footballer and, more to the point, a star member of the youth club boxing team.

 

Peter did well at school.  He was sent to the local Tech. for 'A' levels and eventually to the Poly where he got a degree in engineering.  After he had worked for a few years for a small but innovative firm a local business man set him up in a consultancy.  With hard work it flourished and by the time he was thirty he presided over a growing concern employing twenty five people.  He lived alone in Chelsea.  A man came in every day to do his domestic chores and to cook the occasional meal.  Mostly he ate out in restaurants.  He had given up cricket and football and played golf at the weekend.

 

            There was no woman in his life.  When the call of the hormones became too urgent he paid to be serviced by a charming, discreet and expensive prostitute who relieved his tensions with sensitivity and skill and who would have laughed at any suggestion of emotional attachment.

 

Peter Price led what seemed to be a comfortable life.  He was moderately wealthy.  He had an interesting profession.  He was relieved of domestic chores and responsibilities and he was not sexually frustrated.  His few male friends labelled him a confirmed bachelor.  None thought he was gay and they assumed he had a mistress tucked away somewhere.  In fact he was unhappy and unfulfilled.  Even thirty years later he felt guilty at having stared at the dead girl's nakedness and at having stolen a kiss.  He still had the dream, two or three times a month , and went into the office next day tired and bad tempered.

 

Then he met Cynthia.  He had negotiated a lucrative contract with Scallions, the big armaments manufacturers.  The end of the cold war had affected their profitability and they wanted to diversify into other branches of engineering now that defence orders were becoming scarcer.  Peter's firm was engaged to survey the market for opportunities and redesign their factory floor for the new work.  One of Scallions' design engineers was to join him for a few months as liaison.   Mrs. Schwartz, his middle-aged PA called him one morning on the intercom.

 

"Miss Bowen is here Mr. Price.  Do you want to see her?"

 

"Miss Bowen?  Who's Miss Bowen?"

 

"The engineer from Scallions.  They've sent her for liaison."

 

"You mean they've sent a woman?"

 

The voice came back with a slightly acid tone.  "Yes Mr. Price. They've sent a woman."

 

"Give her a cup of coffee and show her round.  I'll see her in half an hour."

 

Eventually there was a tap on his door and Cynthia Bowen came in.  She was a personable young woman in her mid twenties dressed in the uniform of the female middle manager, a grey worsted suit with a crisp white blouse.  Her light brown hair was cut short.  Her shapely legs were encased in sheer flesh coloured tights  fitted into neat grey moccasins with a small heel.  She wore no jewellery either on her clothes or her fingers.   She stood for a few moments, her brown eyes looking puzzled.  Peter Price was staring at her as if he had seen a ghost.  She was the image of his dream, the dead girl he had kissed all those years ago.   He recovered quickly, asked her to sit down and plunged straight into a survey of the work in hand.   After a brief discussion of her role in the firm he showed her to the office that had been set aside for her.

 

Peter tried to avoid her but he could not get her out of his mind.  Even the dream changed.  The dead girl no longer looked as if she were asleep but lay in the hay staring at him with large brown eyes and when he bent to kiss her kissed him back.  He seemed to find reasons for constant visits to Cynthia's office.  The clerks and typists noticed and laughed about it in the cloakrooms.  Cynthia noticed too.  She knew she was attractive and she could see that he was interested in her.  She knew he was unmarried and expected him to ask her to dinner or to the theatre but he only ever talked about work and seemed very tense  in her presence.

 

One evening they had to complete an interim report together and were staying late at the office.   They had not finished at nine o clock when she yawned  and stretched.

 

"I'm tired and I'm very hungry.  D'you think we could break for

             food?"

 

"I'm terribly sorry Miss Bowen.  I didn't notice how late it was.

            Let's go and have some dinner."

 

He took her to a small Italian restaurant nearby and they had pasta and shared a half bottle of wine.  Relaxing over coffee he learned something about her.  She was bright and amusing but serious about her job  with interesting ideas on the progress of their joint task .  They both went back to the office in good humour to finish the report.

 

After such a pleasant social interlude she thought he would want to repeat the experience but he did not ask her out and continued to address her formally as Miss Bowen.  It was several weeks later that he approached her shyly and said that he was going to a rather splendid trade dinner, that most of his colleagues would have partners and would she care to accompany him.  She agreed on condition that he gave up the 'Miss Bowen' business.  Her name was Cynthia and her friends called her Cynee. 

 

She enjoyed the dinner, the food was good, the cabaret excellent and although Peter did not dance several of the other men at their table were happy to take her round the floor.  They left at midnight and walked up Park Lane looking for a taxi.  She quite naturally tucked her hand in the crook of his elbow as they strolled and was disconcerted when he fell silent and stiffened his arm to his side so that her hand fell away.  He saw her to her door and she invited him in for a

night-cap but he refused, raised his hat politely and was gone

.          

About a fortnight after this he said that he had tickets for the first night of a new and heavily publicised play asking if she would care to go.  Again she enjoyed the play and the dinner which followed but again he seemed very friendly but uninvolved as if he were with a man and not a young and attractive woman.  Cynthia was not a libertine but like most young women she had had love affairs.  At college she had lived with another student in her final year and she had responded to other men since.  She had never been short of male company and expected to be admired, even propositioned.  Peter never touched her, never flirted, was solicitous and charming but never seemed to notice that she was female.

He was having the dream more often now but instead of it disturbing him he almost welcomed it looking forward to the naked figure gazing at him tenderly and responding to his kiss.  They began to go out regularly but he still did not touch her.  One night when he left her she stood on tiptoe and pecked him on the cheek.  She felt him stiffen and flinch.   She did not understand it.  She was pretty sure he was not gay.  She tried old gambits.  At the cinema she moved her hand on the arm of the seat so that the back of her hand touched his.  He moved his hand into his lap.  She pressed her knee into his.  He crossed his legs so as to avoid it. 'My God' she thought  'What am I doing?  I'm acting like a fourteen year old on her first date, trying to hold hands in the movies.'

 

The trouble was she had become very fond of Peter.  He was handsome, intelligent, and amusing .  She could imagine herself in a long term loving relationship with him but it seemed she would not even get a start.  He spent a lot of money on her, the best restaurants, the best seats at the theatre, but seemed to want only companionship in return. 

 

After several months her secondment came to an end and she was due to return to Scallions' main factory in the North of England.  It was to be their last outing together.  She persuaded him to come to her rented flat so that she could cook a meal for him as a parting gesture. There was no way that he could refuse.  She took immense trouble over the meal.  She cleaned the flat, set candles on the table, decanted the wine.  When he arrived at eight everything was set for a romantic evening. 

 

The dinner was a great success.  Peter was something of a gourmet and appreciated good food.  When it was over they had their coffee sitting in low chairs on either side of the gas fire.  He was sipping a glass of port which he rested on the glass topped coffee table and was glancing at a book on Brunel when she excused herself.  She intended to have one last try at getting him to respond to her.

 

She came back dressed in a blue silk wrap, sat herself on his knee , put her arms around his neck and whispered "Peter, you've been so nice to me,  let me be nice to you.  Stay the night darling." and she kissed him open mouthed.  He felt that she was naked under the silk.  He pushed her off him roaring "Don't touch me you filthy little whore!"

 

 Her head crashed into the heavy plate glass of the table as she fell.  A trickle of blood ran from her ear and clotted.  Her eyes were open and gazed at him puzzled and shocked.  The silk wrap had opened as she fell and she lay exposed.  He stared at her for some time.

 

The image came back to him of an eight-year-old boy hiding behind a tree at the edge of a hayfield watching a naked man and a naked woman clinging together on a pile of hay in the warm sunshine.  He heard the grunting and gasping as they pushed against each other in their passion.   The man dressed and left and the girl lay sunbathing.   She heard him move and called out to him.  He came from behind the tree shamefaced and she laughed.  "Want to have a look sonny?" and she opened her legs.  "Go on. Have a good look."  He ran, her laughter following him.  Later he peeped again from behind the tree. She was fast asleep.    He took out his scout knife.  It had two sharp blades, a screwdriver, a tin opener and a spike for taking stones out of horses' hooves.  He opened the spike, crept up to the sleeping girl and pushed it as hard as he could between her breasts.  She jerked and lay still.  It was then that he kissed her.

 

 The image faded.  He got out of the chair and telephoned the police.  Waiting for them to arrive he knelt beside Cynthia's body and kissed her on the still warm lips, his tears falling on to her face.

 

 

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